


Words left unspoken

by lastwagontrainhopper



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Ishval Civil War, Pre-Canon, Royai Week, Royai Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24663901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwagontrainhopper/pseuds/lastwagontrainhopper
Summary: In the midst of the Ishvalan Campaign, Roy finally decides to send some letters back home. A sense of duty, or maybe guilt, drives him to send the last one to Miss Hawkeye. But what can he tell her? How can he justify what he has done with her trust? They were still only strangers, bound together by duty rather than by choice, and by the ghost of a man who had left an indelible mark on both of them.Written for RoyaiWeek2020, prompt 1: Letter(French version available on my profile)
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Words left unspoken

On the second Sunday of each month, the soldiers of the 4th battalion could send letters to their families back home. Every man used the opportunity; some with excess, like Hughes and the novels he sent to his fiancee, and others with restrain, like Ellith who only wrote a few lines to his old mother; but all at least sent _something_.

All, except their commanding officer, Major Roy Mustang.

Roy did, in fact, have a family and friends to send letters to, but the truth was he had no desire to do so. People wrote to their loved ones, he thought, to offer them a piece of landscape discovered while traveling, or to reassure them with news of their well-being. But there was no part of Ishval's suffocating deserts and icy nights that Roy wished to send back to Central, and no news of himself he wanted his relatives to know about. Considering the state he was in, giving them news would hardly reassure them anyway.

No. Roy corrected himself. He was alive and unharmed; this was something that couldn't be said for many of his comrades, and he had to tell this much to his loved ones. He knew an absence of letters would make them assume the worst; he might as well save them the worry if he could.

After all, he had created enough suffering here as it was.

Furthermore, as Hughes had pointed out, his lack of letters was not going unnoticed in the battalion. The men speculated: did the Major have no family? Or did he just not care about them at all? Roy was already being treated like a human weapon by his superiors, and his seeming indifference only strengthened this idea in the soldiers' minds. "You need to show them you have people you care about back home, just like they do," Hughes had advised him. "It will remind them that you're only human after all."

"And maybe", his friend probably thought, "it'll remind you as well."

And so, when the evening of the second Saturday of the month came around, instead of warming up around the fire with the others, Roy borrowed Hughes a pen and a few sheets of paper and got to work.

Thanks to his rank as a Major, he was allowed a private tent furnished with a cot and a small wooden desk; the whole thing lacked luxury but provided an intimacy that many soldiers envied him. In the uncertain light of a candle, Roy began his first letter, addressed to his sisters. He wrote it to Vanessa, the one he had always been closest to, but he knew the other girls would shamelessly read the message over her shoulder as soon as she would open it.

While he was usually so talkative, Roy suddenly found himself at a loss for words. The girls knew him as the fun and charming boy who had been hanging around Madame Christmas' bar since well before the legal age, and who always amazed them by creating flowers with his alchemy. What did this boy and the man who was writing the letter had left in common? What could he tell them without revealing just how much he had changed? Once again, he felt like crumpling the paper into a ball and stopping there. More than anything else, he wanted his sisters to keep as the only image of him the teenage Roy they had known, the one who had not stained his hands with blood yet. But he knew that this was nothing but a false hope: sooner or later, news of the Flame alchemist's work would reach Central, and then, there would be nothing left to hide.

They might as well get used to the idea of a soldier Roy right away.

Nevertheless, he kept a light tone throughout his letter. He talked about the weather, about his uniform which his sisters despised so much and which always seemed too heavy or too light here. He talked about the food, which he described as even worse than Mrs. Christmas' dishes, and the few bottles of whiskey the soldiers would pass around from time to time. He talked about the long evenings spent talking around the fire, and the camaraderie that existed in his battalion, without adding that the respect and fear he inspired in his men prevented him from truly taking part in it.

He talked about nothing else.

In his letter to Mrs. Christmas, he spoke of his constant tiredness, his feeling of loneliness, and the pressure his superiors put him under. His adoptive mother could understand all that – but she had never been in the military, so Roy did not mention the situation of the Amestrian army.

To Colonel Barker, his former superior and mentor in the military, he talked about the ammunition shortages and the delay in resupply that often kept them from advancing for days. He talked about the lack of troops and the cadets barely out of the academy who were going to be brought here to fill in the gaps.

Then, looking at his remaining sheets of paper, Roy wondered who to send his last letter to. He would surely have sent it to Hughes, and was grateful that he didn't have to. This war would have been even worse without a familiar face by his side.

He hesitated for a moment, and addressed his final letter to Miss Hawkeye.

He wasn't sure why, but he felt like he had a duty to write to her. Before being deployed, Roy had gotten into the habit of sending her letters a few times a month to check on how she was adjusting to life in Central. With the state alchemist exam and the work that came with his entrance in the military, he had had little time to do more to help her.

Even though Miss Hawkeye had told him several times that he owed her nothing, Roy could not help but feel a responsibility toward the young girl. It may have been a bit chivalrous – he preferred to think of it as a gentleman's attitude - but he wanted to look after her. After all, she had no family left to lean on, and she didn't know anyone in the capital. More importantly, it was thanks to her and her father than he had become a state alchemist, and Roy didn't want to give the impression that he had abandoned Miss Hawkeye right after obtaining her father's research, like he had used her for that purpose.

But when she answered his letters, the girl had always taken a polite and formal tone, staying deliberately vague about her activities and not once asking for his help. She obviously wanted to take care of herself, and Roy had not insisted. How strange, he thought not for the first time, that they were still almost strangers to each other despite what they had shared.

It was certainly not the only strange thing about Miss Hawkeye. Roy had grown up surrounded by his foster sisters and been around all kinds of girls at his school in Central. Some of them had been shy and others had been confident, some serious and others hilarious, but none of the girls he met had been anything like his teacher's daughter.

Roy had only seen Miss Hawkeye a few times during his years of studying at her house: her father had sent her to a private school in the nearest town, and the few occasion when she came home were strangely timed with the moments Berthold Hawkeye sent his apprentice back to Central, to "give him a little vacation". Therefore, they had not truly spoken until her father's death, when Roy had taken care of the funeral.

At first, she had seemed sweet and reserved, nothing more. A little naive as well, he thought to himself now – as naive as he had been then. But soon enough, when she decided to entrust him with her father's research, Roy had discovered the other side of her.

She was a rock. Once she made a choice, she was unshakable, and accepted the consequences of her decision without flinching. And while she was indeed discreet, she displayed her will as firmly as if she had screamed it at the top of her lungs. She had given him the impression of someone who had received a lot of responsibilities, with little recognition.

After the funeral, Miss Hawkeye had begun to organize her father's possession with cold method and efficiency, as if her last family member had not died a few days prior. At her request, Roy had begun studying her father's research notes immediately, in her family home. When she had revealed her back to him, she had seemed slightly embarrassed, but had shown no sign of hesitation, and no complaints or nervous giggle had escaped her lips. If it had been anyone else, Roy would surely have attempted some jokes to lighten the mood and make her comfortable, but the girl treated her father research with such gravity that humor would have seemed nothing short of sacrilegious.

Roy could not help but feel a deep uneasiness at the sight of the tattoo left by her father, but he had not dared to ask out loud the questions that were burning his throat. It was not his place: he knew nothing of her relationship with her father, just as he knew almost nothing about her. They were strangers, bound together by duty rather than choice, and Miss Hawkeye seemed determined to fulfill this duty without fail. The only other thing linking them was a man who had left an indelible mark on both of them and who was nothing more now than a ghost.

And Roy could feel the ghost's disapproving gaze on his shoulders every day since his arrival in Ishval. With each snap of his fingers, he could imagine his teacher's anger and disappointment with the way he stained fire alchemy. Master Hawkeye had been right: his alchemy had been turned into a mere weapon in the service of the state, all because of Roy and of his foolish, trusting daughter.

His teacher was long dead, Roy needed to remind himself, and there was nothing he owed him anymore. Miss Hawkeye, on the other hand, was very much alive, and it was her who had gifted him fire alchemy after all. Roy did owe her something: some explanations, or excuses, he didn't know, but he felt like he had to tell her something, _anything,_ before she found out from the newspaper the devastation her choice had wreaked.

Above all, Roy wanted her to know he had been sincere, that day when he had talked about his dream. It hadn't been a lie to manipulate her and gain power; he had really intended to use alchemy for the good of the people, and really joined the military to protect Amestris. Simply…fate had decided otherwise.

Roy took his time to lay his thoughts on paper, carefully weighing each word. He didn't sugarcoat the situation as he had done for his sisters – he knew Miss Hawkeye could handle the truth, and he owed her nothing less. He added, however, how his alchemy had helped save many Amestrian lives; it was a small consolation, but it was the only one he could offer her. He apologized: it made of course no difference, but it felt right to do so.

The following morning, with dark circles under his eyes, Roy accompanied his men to the mail wagon for the first time, his letters carefully folded in the pocket of his uniform. As he waited in line to deliver them, he saw a group of fresh recruits stepping down a train coming from Central.

Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a female cadet with blond hair and amber eyes, and his heart skipped a beat. He turned his head to get a better view, and felt the ground beneath his fleet slipped away. It was her.

No. This couldn't be happening. His throat was tightly shut; he could do nothing but stare at her in a mortified silence. The blonde cadet didn't look in his direction and followed her regiment, leaving for the main camp before Roy could bring himself to call to her.

Soon, it was his turn to drop his mail. Stunned as if he had just received a blow to the head, Roy took the letters out of his pocket and stared at them. He added them to the pile in front of him, except for one, which he kept clenched in his fist.

Once out of the line, he snapped his fingers, and all his carefully crafted excuses, explanations, and apologies went up in smoke in an instant and disappeared, like unspoken words stuck in his throat.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any feedback is greatly appreciated.


End file.
